Ending Como's reign comes Guy Mitchell with his story* of an English banker who falls in love with a hawaiian hula-hula girl. To me that synopsis sounds like it could easily find itself on the weirder end of the britpop scale, maybe on The Great Escape in fact. Inevitably its actually a crooner novelty hit, somewhere between swing and music hall. At best you can say its the sort of say its part of that comedy tradition of sending up the middle class, at worst you will be hoping rock and roll hurries up and gets invented. Mitchell himself incidently was actually American, but is using the form of the pop song to pretend he's an English banker.

A few firsts here - the first group to get to No1, the first British act of any kind to get to No1. The Stargazers were quite big in an era where bands werent, they were voted most popular vocal group by the NME five years in a row, making them a sort of Arctic Monkeys for the 1950s. Obviously the Stargazers were a group in the traditional sense, i.e the song is built entirely around their ability to harmonize. As such it has a weird, almost war-time black-and-white quality (like much of the music topping the charts at this point) but when you consider what is about to come and knock it off the top spot, then you kind of think its pretty good really, as far as campfire harmonies go.

008 (How Much Is) That Doggie In The Window? - Lita Roza (17 April 1953) No1 for 1 Week

Oh dear. Everything is wrong here, from the Noel Gallagher inspiring misuse of brackets and question mark, to the actual song, the first out and out novelty number one. There were actually a few versions of this thing doing the rounds at the time, Patti Page's is the most famous, but it was met with poor distribution in the UK by record label Mercury, which cleared the path for Roza's version to be the one people bought, making her the first british woman to climb to the top of the UK singles chart. In fairness to Roza. she knew it was awful, was talked into doing one take because it'd be a big hit, nailed it in one and never sang it again, even after it got to number one, much to the chargin of her record label. Artistic struggles with the record labels start here, then.

A few firsts here - the first group to get to No1, the first British act of any kind to get to No1. The Stargazers were quite big in an era where bands werent, they were voted most popular vocal group by the NME five years in a row, making them a sort of Arctic Monkeys for the 1950s. Obviously the Stargazers were a group in the traditional sense, i.e the song is built entirely around their ability to harmonize. As such it has a weird, almost war-time black-and-white quality (like much of the music topping the charts at this point) but when you consider what is about to come and knock it off the top spot, then you kind of think its pretty good really, as far as campfire harmonies go.

009 I Believe - Frankie Laine (24th April 1953/3 July 1953/21 August 1953) Weeks at No 1 18 (non consecutive)

If you're fed up of hearing Someone Like You, imagine what it was like for pop pickers back in 1953, who had the same song at number 1 for 18 weeks of the year. The first stint was 9 weeks, equalling Al Martinos stay at the top, but then after a week away it bounced back for another six, lost out for a week, then climbed to the top again for three weeks. Which means this song still holds the record for most weeks at Number One, even if they were non-consecutive weeks. Anyway, I Believe is a song I know pretty well, I think it was on an advert or something because my dad occasionally did crooning impressions of it. Its a song designed to make people have a bit of hope because the Korean War had just broken out and everyone was all like "what not this again", which is presumably what they were saying about this track around week 12 or 13. Still its not all chart records, the song is a proper old school big ballad, although with a title like that, it has somewhat inevitably wound up a hymn.

ORIGINAL: rawlinson I think it's simply that people buy them for their kids, that's why we get all the Blobby/Teletubbies style number ones. Because we're a smaller country that kind of buyer is enough to send them to number one. And other than Queen, they're the only singles Gimli has ever bought.

I'll have you know, the only contemporary single I've ever bought was Men in Black.

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So, sir, we let him have it right up! And I have to report, sir, he did not like it, sir.

I know all of these songs so far and that surprises me. Are these generally well known, are 60 year old chart toppers all the rage with folk that grew up in the 80s and 90s?

I'm almost convinced that it was Roza's version of How Much is That Doggie that I used to have an a children's song LP, the kind of compilation that also included Ernie The Fastest Milkman in The West, The Railroad Runs Through The Middle Of the House and Gilly, Gilly, Ossenfeffer, Katzenellen Bogen by the Sea. Say what you like about the song but at least she can sing, and has a better voice than just about any other Liverpudlian who'll be on this list.

Como and Laine are ace and I love both of these songs. My least favourite so far is Broken Wings.

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So, sir, we let him have it right up! And I have to report, sir, he did not like it, sir.

I'm almost convinced that it was Roza's version of How Much is That Doggie that I used to have an a children's song LP, the kind of compilation that also included Ernie The Fastest Milkman in The West, The Railroad Runs Through The Middle Of the House and Gilly, Gilly, Ossenfeffer, Katzenellen Bogen by the Sea.

Nope, but it is where I first heard Rolf Harris! I've actually just found it on Amazon and the related searches pointed my in the direction of this one, which I also had and was much better. Not thought about it in years but I remember crying when my copy was broken. I'm going to youtube all the songs now.

Though I'm now saddened to recall that Bernard Cribbins' Right Said Fred was on this LP and it never made it to number one

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So, sir, we let him have it right up! And I have to report, sir, he did not like it, sir.

I'll help form a circle around the 3 of you, chanting "scrap! scrap! scrap!"

quote:

Its a song designed to make people have a bit of hope because the Korean War had just broken out and everyone was all like "what not this again", which is presumably what they were saying about this track around week 12 or 13

This is going to be my new favourite thread. I reckon by the time you reach 1982 I'll be having some serious Simon Bates/Tony Blackburn flashbacks and find myself on Ebay trying to find albums by Yazoo or The Christians

Briefly bumping Frankie Laine from the top spot, Eddie Fisher is back and making chart history, as the first person to get to number one with two different singles. Its another big ballad (Sinatra also did a version) about a guy who is in love with a girl who jilted him and is getting married to some other guy. He's walking behind her, down the aisle, possibly metaphorically, and to be honest, he sounds like a bit of a mopey stalker about the whole thing. Still the guy had a voice, and it did provide a bit of restbite before I Believe popped back.

011 The Song From Moulin Rouge - Mantovani (14th Aug 1953) No 1 for 1 week

So after six more weeks at No 1 for I Believe, we enter the world of film themes getting to the top spot, although this wasn't the version of the song from Moulin Rouge that actually appeared in the 1952 version of Moulin Rouge. This version was by Mantovani, who might not be a household name now (though The Kinks referenced him directly in Prince of the Punks) but statistically was the best selling artist before The Beatles in the UK - which considering some of the competition, is very impressive indeed. Anyway, if your wondering which song from Moulin Rouge, it is the one often known as Where is Your Heart, although it is confusingly not called that in the film, where it is called It's April Again. Presumably Decca wanted to avoid this kind of thing, and so called the amazingly cynical "The Song From Moulin Rouge" to make sure everyone knew what they were getting. Confused? The song itself, in this form, is entirely instrumental and does sound like film music. Which is fine as far as it goes, and I'm sure people who really love the film will kinda get excited about it, but you know, this is not getting on my favourite songs of all time mixtape

I Believe has now left us forever, and Guy Mitchell has returned to the top spot. If you remember he was previously responsible for the borderline novelty song about a banker falling in love with a hula-hula girl. There is an element of trying to recreate success here - same writer, producer and performer as Mitchell's previous chart topper, but this is a more straightforward big band type affair. The lyrics are about being out and seeing a girl who is really quite attractive, so in some ways could be seen as a 1950s version of David Guetta's Sexy Chick. Its pretty good actually, certainly better than the last few that have popped up. And if you have a secret (or not secret) love of the Rat Pack then this may well be your kind of thing.

Frankie Laine is back! Just six weeks after I Believe was knocked off No1 for the last time, he's back to exact revenge on Guy Mitchell, by taking back the top spot. This is not, unfortunatly the original version of Jim Hendrix's Hey Joe, this is a country singalong, which has a weird slightly atonal, faintly bluesy break in the middle. Proving that in this country we are naturally a bit suspicious of anything that sounds a bit C&W, Hey Joe only stayed at No1 for weeks, though it stayed on the chart while his next hit charted, meaning that he had 4 of the then Top 12 at the same time. So next time you think, Gosh David Guetta's got a lot of songs on the charts these days, well he doesn't have quite Frankie's success percentage.

014 Answer Me - David Whitfield (6th Nov 1953) No 1 for 2 Weeks (Non-conseutive, second week was shared with Frankie Laine's version of the same song)

Another first, but certainly not last here - Answer Me was the first song to get to No 1 despite being banned by the BBC (though this is pre-Radio 1, so its tough to know how much of an impact that can have had). It wasn't banned for a sexy reason, like Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, it was banned because its a song directly addressing God, which was seen as inappropriate for a pop single. The song itself then is a big ballad demanding an answer from the guy upstairs about why his love has left him (clue: maybe its because your sat around demanding things off God?) and is not in the least bit controversial, though it is kind of cute that a song got banned from the BBC for being too conservative.

015 Answer Me - Frankie Laine (13th November 1953) No 1 for 8 weeks (4th week shared with previous version of song by Guy Mitchell)

Another first here, a different version of the same song replacing it at No1, and what do you know, its our old buddy Frankie Laine again. Laine's version was a bigger success than Mitchell's, going for 7 weeks at number one of its own right, and then for one week in the middle of that the Number One spot was shared, by two versions of the same song. Which if nothing else is a sign that they had been taking far too small a sample of record shops at this point.

There is no debate! The Offspring sold out, full stop. They moved away from their punk roots (albeit skate-punk / pop-punk) when they moved from Epitaph to Columbia, and started recording horrible singles like Pretty Fly and Why Don't You Get a Job, trying to chase the dollar. Come Out and Play sounds like a commercial track retrospect, but they were still fairly unknown at the time (especially in the UK) til MTV and their ilk went sniffing for the next Longview.

I'm sorry, I hate the term "sell-out". Bands aren't required to stay within the same narrow musical confines and aiming for a more commercial approach is perfectly fine if the songs you produce are good ones. It's unrealistic to expect bands to have the same priorities in their late 20s/30s as they did when starting out.

Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) is a great song too (as is Why Don't You Get A Job?), although that's a matter of taste.

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"I've been too honest with myself, I should have lied like everybody else"

ORIGINAL: jonson This is going to be my new favourite thread. I reckon by the time you reach 1982 I'll be having some serious Simon Bates/Tony Blackburn flashbacks and find myself on Ebay trying to find albums by Yazoo or The Christians

Even after all this time there still hasn't been a harvest for the world